She sighed. “I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“What do you want? A medal?”

“For starters. A trophy would be nice, too.”

She smiled. “What do you think you’re holding right now?”

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully. After the meal was cleared away, some of the family went to watch the game, others went to the kitchen to help store the mountains of leftovers. The afternoon was unhurried, and after stuffing himself with two pieces of pie, even Jonah seemed to find the atmosphere soothing. Larry and Miles chatted about New Bern, Larry quizzing Miles about local history. Sarah wandered from the kitchen, where her mother repeated (and repeated) the fact that Miles seemed like a wonderful young man, back to the living room to make sure that Miles and Jonah didn’t feel as if she’d abandoned them. Brian, dutifully, spent most of his time in the kitchen, washing and drying the china that his mother had used for dinner. A half hour before Miles had to head home to get dressed for work, Miles, Sarah, and Jonah went for a walk, just as Miles had promised. They headed toward the end of the block and into the wooded area that fronted the development. Jonah grabbed Sarah’s hand and led her through the woods, laughing as he did so, and it was while watching them weave their way among the trees that it gradually dawned on Miles where all this might lead. While he knew he loved Sarah, he’d been touched that she had chosen to share her family with him. He liked the feeling of closeness, the holiday atmosphere, the casual way her relatives had seemed to respond to him, and he was certain that he didn’t want this to be an isolated invitation.

It was then that he first thought of asking Sarah to marry him, and once the idea came to him, he found it nearly impossible to dismiss. Up ahead, Sarah and Jonah were tossing stones in a small creek, one after the next. Jonah then hopped over it, and Sarah followed.

“C’mon!” she shouted. “We’re exploring!”

“Yeah, Dad, hurry up!”

“I’m coming-you don’t have to wait! I’ll catch up.”

He didn’t rush to do so. Instead, he was lost in his thoughts as they continued to move farther and farther away, eventually vanishing behind a thick grove. Miles pushed his hands into his pockets.

Marriage.

It was still early in their relationship, of course, and he had no intention of dropping to his knees here and now to pop the question. At the same time, he suddenly knew that there would come a moment when he would. She was right for him; of that he was certain. And she was wonderful with Jonah. Jonah seemed to love her, and that, too, was important, because if Jonah hadn’t liked her, he wouldn’t even be considering what a future with Sarah might bring. And with that, something inside clicked, a key fitting neatly into a lock. Though he wasn’t even consciously aware of it, the question of “if” had become a question of “when.”

With this decision, he unconsciously felt himself relax. He couldn’t see Sarah or Jonah as he crossed over the creek, but he followed the direction he’d last seen them going. A minute later he spotted them, and as he closed the distance between them, he realized he hadn’t been this happy in years.

From Thanksgiving Day through mid-December, Miles and Sarah grew even closer, both as lovers and as friends, their relationship blossoming into something deeper and more permanent.

Miles also started dropping hints about their possible future together. Sarah wasn’t blind to what he really meant by his words; in fact, she found herself adding to his comments. Little things-when they were lying in bed, he might mention that he thought the walls should be repainted; Sarah would respond that a pale yellow might look cheery and they picked out the color together. Or Miles would mention that the garden needed some color and she’d say that she’d always loved camellias, and that’s what she’d plant if she lived here. That weekend, Miles planted five of the bushes along the front of the house. The file stayed in the closet, and for the first time in a long time, the present seemed more alive to Miles than the past. But what neither Sarah nor Miles could know was that although they were ready to put the past behind them, events would soon conspire to make that impossible.

Chapter 16

Ihad another sleepless night, and as much as I want to go back to bed, I realize I can’t. Not until I tell you how it happened.

The accident didn’t happen the way you probably imagine, or the way that Miles imagined. I hadn’t, as he suspected, been drinking that night. Nor was I under the influence of any drugs. I was completely sober.

What happened with Missy that night was, quite simply, an accident. I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my mind. In the fifteen years since it happened, I’ve felt a sense of déjà vu at odd times-when carrying boxes to a moving van a couple of years ago, for instance-and the feeling still makes me stop whatever it is I’m doing, if only for a moment, and I find myself drawn back in time, to the day that Missy Ryan died.

I’d been working since early that morning, unloading boxes onto pallets for storage in a local warehouse, and I was supposed to be off at six. But a late shipment of plastic pipes came in right before closing time-my employer that day was the supplier for most of the shops in the Carolinas -and the owner asked if I wouldn’t mind staying for an extra hour or so. I didn’t mind; it meant overtime, time and a half, a great way to pick up some much needed extra cash. What I hadn’t counted on was how full the trailer was, or that I’d pretty much end up doing most of the job alone.

There were supposed to be four guys working, but one had called in sick that day, another couldn’t stay since his son was playing a baseball game and he didn’t want to miss it. That left two of us to do the job, which still would have been okay. But a few minutes after the trailer pulled in, the other guy turned his ankle, and the next thing I knew, I was all by myself. It was hot, too. The temperature outside was in the nineties, and inside the warehouse it was even hotter, over a hundred degrees and humid. I’d already put in eight hours, with another three hours to go. Trucks had been pulling up all day, and because I didn’t work there regularly, most of my work was the backbreaking type. The other three guys rotated turns using the forklift, so they might get a break now and then. Not me. My job was to sort the boxes and then haul them from the back of the trailer to where the door slid up, loading everything on pallets so the forklift could move them into the warehouse. But by the end of the day, since I was the only one there, I had to do it all. By the time I finished up, I was bone-tired. I could barely move my arms, I had spasms in my back, and since I’d missed dinner, I was starving, too. That’s why I decided to go to Rhett’s Barbecue instead of heading straight home. After a long, hard day, there’s nothing better in the world than barbecue, and when I finally crawled into my car, I was thinking to myself that in just a few minutes, I’d finally be able to relax.

My car back then was a real beater, dented and banged up all over, a Pontiac Bonneville that had a dozen years on the road already. I’d got it used the summer before and paid only three hundred dollars for it. But even though it looked like hell, it ran good and I’d never had a problem with it. The engine started up whenever I turned the key, and I’d fixed the brakes myself when I first bought it, which was all it really needed at the time. So I got in my car just as the sun was finally going down. At that time of night, the sun does funny things as it arcs downward in the west. The sky is changing color almost by the minute, shadows are spreading across the roads like long, ghostly fingers, and since there wasn’t so much as a cloud in the sky, there were moments when the glare would slant sharply through the window and I’d have to squint so I could see where I was going.